You assert this as though asserting it itself demonstrates that it is true.

It is self-evident. If everyone played by the same set of rules, there would be no purpose to moral prescriptions. How can this be controversial? If there is no deviation from the rules, the rules are superfluous. This is just common sense.

But my point is precisely that the moral objectivists insist that conflicting goods revolve solely around the assumption that their own moral/political agenda is necessarily the default in any discussion.

The "goods" are seen as "conflicted" only by those who don't grasp that all truly rational and virtuous men and women are categorically and imperatively obligated to become "one of us".

And what I would be interested in in regards to Rawls's "methods" is the extent to which they might be effective in yanking me up out of this...

Faust wrote: So read him. That's also common sense.

Yeah, but that's what folks will say about Plato or Aristotle or Descartes or Hume or Kant or Hegel or any other philosopher of note who has delved into moral and political philosophy.

I simply want to be apprised as to how their theoretical assumptions might be relevant in yanking me up out of my hole. With respect to an actual context in which values comes into conflict.

In this regard, why should I read him?

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Faust wrote: Rawls does not propose objective values.

Okay, but his methods are such that he either felt more or less "fractured and fragmented" with regard to his own particular "I" when confronting those who did not share his own value judgments.

This is always what I wish to explore with folks like KT. He, like me, rejects objective morality and has chosen to become a pragmatist. But my own pragmatism is a far more profoundly problematic existential contraption than his appears to be. It is rickety as hell. My "I" allows me to construe my values as rooted precariously in dasein and conflicting goods and political economy. As, in other words, always and ever subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new knowledge, information and ideas.

I am never able [psychologically] to feel any comfort and consolation when confronting the question "how ought I to live?" And that's before the part about oblivion.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Okay, but his methods are such that he either felt more or less "fractured and fragmented" with regard to his own particular "I" when confronting those who did not share his own value judgments.

How would you know this? he does not propose value judgments. He proposes a method for resolving conflicts, from the perspective of distributive justice.

Your discomfort is your own. I know of no good philosopher that has a cure for that. Because they don't try to have a cure for that. Your criticism is like criticizing an auto mechanic for not being able to cure a cold.

Okay, but his methods are such that he either felt more or less "fractured and fragmented" with regard to his own particular "I" when confronting those who did not share his own value judgments.

How would you know this? he does not propose value judgments. He proposes a method for resolving conflicts, from the perspective of distributive justice.

Here I can only extrapolate from my own experience. Whether you approach value judgments in regard to either means or ends, you are going to be more or less comforted and consoled with your own. You are going to be more or less convinced that your own moral narrative/political agenda is in sync with some facsimile of the "real me" in sync with some facsimile of "the right thing to do".

It is only a question of how fractured and fragmented you actually do feel in, say, embracing or rejecting President Trump's policies.

From my perspective, I'm curious to explore Rawls's method for resolving particularly ferocious conflicting goods like abortion. I'm curious to explore how someone like him might react to the manner in which I construe the role that dasein, conflicting goods and political economy play in conflicts like this.

But the only way that I can illustrate this is in discussing an issue like abortion with someone who does employ Rawls's methods in an attempt to resolve it.

So, give it a go, okay? What on earth does "distributive justice" -- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/just ... tributive/ -- mean when applied to the killing of the unborn? or with respect to the role of government? or capital punishment? or tax policy? or poverty around the globe?

Faust wrote: Your discomfort is your own. I know of no good philosopher that has a cure for that. Because they don't try to have a cure for that. Your criticism is like criticizing an auto mechanic for not being able to cure a cold.

All I can do here is to note the manner in which I react to conflicting goods given the extent to which I construe value judgments as existential concoctions rooted in partiuclar historical, cultural and interpersonal interactions that thrive on contingency, chance and change.

And while the objectivists, the deontologists and the idealists among us have a cure for practically everything when conflicts erupt around values, I'm always more intrigued by those who don't.

They eschew God and political ideology and moral obligations rooted categorically and imperatively in reason, but are somehow able to feel considerably less problematic and precarious than "I" do regarding the values [and the political prejudices] that they finally do take their leap to.

And they will either bring their own thinking -- their own "methodology" -- into a discussion revolving around both a particular context and set of behaviors or they won't.

If they feel less "fractured and fragmented" than "I" do here, all the better for them. And it's not like I spend my whole life agonizing over it myself. I've got plenty of distractions to fall back on to make living my life both rewarding and fulfilling.

It's just something that philosophically has always intrigued me: How ought one to live in a No God world?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Rawls would disallow metaphysical/religious arguments, as the courts generally do. He champions the importance of public institutions, such as the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights. Remember that Row v. Wade was fundamentally about the power of government.

So, claiming that there is a soul present at conception is not going to go very far with Rawls. Keep in mind that there are SCOTUS decisions that would have been inconceivable a hundred years ago that are commonplace now.

In all, even religious people accept, overall, a secular society governed by a system of rights. Natural Rights, which are the basic rights, are problematic for me, because I conceive of them as metaphysical in nature. However, there is a way to defend natural rights, in general, without calling them natural rights and without conceiving them as metaphysical. Same rights, different justification.

Rawls would allow abortion, but in the end, it's because of traditional arrangements, our particular form of government and the balance of power between the government and the voting public. This is, to be sure, might makes right - it's a political and not primarily philosophical question for Rawls. The philosophy comes in at the beginning. It's a long argument that i cannot recount here - it's a surefire tl;dr.

Faust wrote: Rawls would disallow metaphysical/religious arguments, as the courts generally do. He champions the importance of public institutions, such as the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights. Remember that Row v. Wade was fundamentally about the power of government.

That may well be how the lawyers see it, but for many, many others, Roe is all about the conflicting goods embedded in the act of killing the unborn.

And here in my view "distributive justice" is either more or less an intellectual contraption. From my frame of mind, the law is merely a reflection of human interactions at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power. And this I see as existential down to the bone.

Faust wrote: So, claiming that there is a soul present at conception is not going to go very far with Rawls. Keep in mind that there are SCOTUS decisions that would have been inconceivable a hundred years ago that are commonplace now.

But folks like Rawls still have to interact with those who insist that the soul is a very real manifestation of one or another God. And those who construe abortion as revolving first and foremost around gender equality. That doesn't go away just because the Supremes come down one way or another. The law in my view is hopelessly entangled in all of the many conflicting and contradictory ways in which actual flesh and blood human beings answer the question, "how ought one to live"?

I offer my own narrative here. Revolving around the manner in which I construe the is/ought world as the existential embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. How then might Rawls have reacted to that given a particular context?

Faust wrote: In all, even religious people accept, overall, a secular society governed by a system of rights. Natural Rights, which are the basic rights, are problematic for me, because I conceive of them as metaphysical in nature. However, there is a way to defend natural rights, in general, without calling them natural rights and without conceiving them as metaphysical. Same rights, different justification.

Another "general description". How are "natural rights" actually defended in the case of abortion? Existentially rather than metaphysically.

Faust wrote: Rawls would allow abortion, but in the end, it's because of traditional arrangements, our particular form of government and the balance of power between the government and the voting public. This is, to be sure, might makes right - it's a political and not primarily philosophical question for Rawls. The philosophy comes in at the beginning. It's a long argument that i cannot recount here - it's a surefire tl;dr.

It would be interesting to explore the extent to which Rawls's conclusions here overlap with the life that he actually lived -- insofar as it came into contact with the issue of abortion.

And, for the objectivists among us, might makes right only because in embracing their own set of moral and political assumptions, right makes might.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Speech, language, everything we say is an intellectual contraption. An aborted fetus is not. That's just the way it goes.

While Roe is about killing for many, the point is that all of these people have already accepted societal contraptions, like the Constitution, Scotus, laws, a lot of moral principles that almost everyone agrees on and how we got there. There are intellectual contraptions that precede, historically and logically, the intellectual contraption of any given position on abortion. So yes, it's an intersection roughly as you describe it. That doesn't prevent you from reading Rawls or recognizing that we have actual, real world methods for settling disputes, incuding moral disputes.

A Rawlisian has to interact, but he doesn't have to allow metaphysics to enter the public debate, or the legal one. The political one, sure.

Disagreement won't go away, but moral disagreements are not the most important ones. If society is arranged well, they are not important at all. I don't know why you think they are.

Faust wrote: Speech, language, everything we say is an intellectual contraption. An aborted fetus is not. That's just the way it goes.

Okay, but the words we use in regard to an aborted fetus are either wholly in sync with human behaviors actually able to be fully described or they are not.

A doctor who performs abortions can write a paper describing her procedure. And the language is wholly in sync with human biology and abortion as a medical procedure.

Or she can perform the abortion on a video or in the presense of others at the clinic and illustrate how her words are wholly in sync with the world we live in.

But those who argue for or against abortion as a moral issue find their words reaching a point where clear disagreements arise. Is the zygote, embryo or fetus an actual human being? What precise words could be chosen able to establish that? And is it in fact unethical to kill the unborn? What precise words could be chosen in order to establish this?

In fact, when it comes to the morality of the procedure there are countless actual existential variables that make each abortion unique. Those on one side have their words here while those on the other side have their own. How [philosophically or otherwise] is the whole truth to be established?

Now, I'm not saying that it can't be. I'm only noting that I have not myself encountered a "world of words" able to establish it "in my head".

Faust wrote: While Roe is about killing for many, the point is that all of these people have already accepted societal contraptions, like the Constitution, Scotus, laws, a lot of moral principles that almost everyone agrees on and how we got there.

What of those who insist that with respect to what they construe to be a genocide inflicted on the unborn, these social contraptions are not acceptable? And what of those who fight to make the law of the land more in sync with their own interpretation of the Bible?

Whose "moral principles"? In what particular context?

Faust wrote: There are intellectual contraptions that precede, historically and logically, the intellectual contraption of any given position on abortion. So yes, it's an intersection roughly as you describe it. That doesn't prevent you from reading Rawls or recognizing that we have actual, real world methods for settling disputes, incuding moral disputes.

All I am noting is that others here have their own eminent intellectuals of choice. They suggest that I read their man or woman. What I want of them however is to take the arguments that their prefer out into the world of actual conflicting goods [in a particular context] and to note for me the manner in which "for all practical purposes" their "methodology" and "conclusions" effectively expose the components of my own moral narrative here as a less reasonable assessment.

Faust wrote: A Rawlisian has to interact, but he doesn't have to allow metaphysics to enter the public debate, or the legal one. The political one, sure.

On the other hand, different folks have different understandings regarding attempts to distinguish metaphysics and legalities and politics.

How might a Rawlsian describe this with respect to the killing of the unborn? While I don't pretend to understand metaphysically how any particular abortion is related to a complete understanding of existence itself, it seems reasonable to me to suggest that with respect to the law, political power and moral narratives, "distributive justice" is either more or less effective in responding to my point that value judgments are rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Faust wrote: Disagreement won't go away, but moral disagreements are not the most important ones. If society is arranged well, they are not important at all. I don't know why you think they are.

How on earth might any particular society be "arranged well" such that when it comes to the actual killing of unborn human beings [as many insist they are] moral disagreements are not the fundamental issue?

I must be misunderstanding you.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Enough with the gobbledygook. Wholly in sync with human behaviors? Fully described? What is fully described? What is an existential variable?

You are missing my point. People aren't out there (in this country) stoning adultresses or cutting off the hands of a thief. We, almost all of us, have already subscribed to certain ways in which we settle disputes. We don't have to invent the wheel every time Joey and Suzy have an argument about a publicly defined and publicly experienced issue.

We just do not include the Bible in public debate - not where it counts. SCOTUS doesn't. Laws that do are regularly knocked down as unconstitutional. This is exactly what the Religious Right is screaming about. Those who insist regularly lose. Again, we have a previously accepted method for settling these disputes. And this method has already been infused with moral reasoning. Read Roe if you won't read Rawls.

I am answering your questions, but you are ignoring the answers. Just flat out ignoring them. Politics and law are as practical as you're going to get. Joey and Suzy having it out over the kitchen table is not more practical, and injecting Existential mumbo-jumbo is not more practical. Just because it doesn't work for a fractured "I" doesn't mean it doesn't work. There just aren't that many fractured "I"s out there.

People may have different understandings, but there is no point in including the incoherent, the ignorant and the stupid. If you can't distinguish English Common Law from a tarot card reading, you don't belong in the conversation. Distributive justice is not effective or ineffective. it's an analysis of what we actually do. Again, if you don't like analysis, philosophy just isn't for you.

People insist they are human beings because the soul enters the body at conception.

So, moral disagreements are not fundamental. Take the Ten Commandments and all the other commandments that follow in the Bible (there are a lot of them). This was fundamentally law. Law. These were laws for the people of the tribe, for the "citizens". They....were....laws. They did of course have a moral content. But these commandments spell out what individuals can do and what the government can. So, you shall not kill, but the government can, by stoning an adultress, for instance. These were political arrangements. More important than Rachel and Hezekiah's particular views on abortion.

Faust wrote: Enough with the gobbledygook. Wholly in sync with human behaviors? Fully described? What is fully described? What is an existential variable?

All we can do in regards to our reactions to human behaviors that come into conflict over value judgments [as philosophers or otherwise] is to describe [as best we can] what we perceive a particular situation to be.

There are those who insist that one's value judgments [and thus behaviors] ought to be in sync with God, or Marx, or Freud, or Hitler, or Mao, or Kant, or Nietzsche or Rorty.

As for the descriptions we give, the language we use can only be more or less connected precisely to the world we live in, the behaviors we choose. Thus the doctor performing an abortion has a considerably more exact vocabulary than the ethicist attempting to describe the pregnant woman's moral obligation.

As for gobbledygook, some insist that this revolves more around the didactic intellectual contraptions some "serious philosophers" employ when they take their "technically correct" "analyses" out into the world of actual human interactions.

Faust wrote: You are missing my point. People aren't out there (in this country) stoning adultresses or cutting off the hands of a thief. We, almost all of us, have already subscribed to certain ways in which we settle disputes. We don't have to invent the wheel every time Joey and Suzy have an argument about a publicly defined and publicly experienced issue.

What on earth does that have to with this:

How might a Rawlsian describe this with respect to the killing of the unborn? While I don't pretend to understand metaphysically how any particular abortion is related to a complete understanding of existence itself, it seems reasonable to me to suggest that with respect to the law, political power and moral narratives, "distributive justice" is either more or less effective in responding to my point that value judgments are rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Faust wrote: We just do not include the Bible in public debate - not where it counts. SCOTUS doesn't. Laws that do are regularly knocked down as unconstitutional. This is exactly what the Religious Right is screaming about. Those who insist regularly lose. Again, we have a previously accepted method for settling these disputes. And this method has already been infused with moral reasoning. Read Roe if you won't read Rawls.

We? What "we" do here and now is to be the default in evaluating what others have done, do otherwise or ever will do? You simply exclude any and all religious or political or philosophical narratives that don't overlap with the U.S. Constitution? And what does this document tell us about the existential relationship between "distributive justice" and abortion? Or, say, the Second Amendment. How might Rawls's "methods" be applicable here?

Faust wrote: I am answering your questions, but you are ignoring the answers. Just flat out ignoring them. Politics and law are as practical as you're going to get.

Politics and law have ever and always been embedded in political economy. Such that "distributive justice" will always be more in sync with the interests of the nihilists who own and operate the global economy re "the class struggle", than anything Rawls might have proposed. Imagine, for example, a champion of John Rawls addressing the folks at the upcoming Bilderberg Group enclave.

And the answers that you give to my questions bear almost no resemblance to answers that seem reasonable to me. It's just that I have no illusions that my own answers here [with respect to conflicting goods] are anything other than existential contraptions rooted in dasein.

Faust wrote: Joey and Suzy having it out over the kitchen table is not more practical, and injecting Existential mumbo-jumbo is not more practical. Just because it doesn't work for a fractured "I" doesn't mean it doesn't work. There just aren't that many fractured "I"s out there.

Of course there aren't. Who would willingly prefer to view conflicting goods as I do? Who would actually choose to reject the comforting and consoling idea that I am in sync with the real me in sync with the right thing to do? Whether as an objectivists or otherwise.

Faust wrote: People may have different understandings, but there is no point in including the incoherent, the ignorant and the stupid.

This is precisely the sort of smug, arrogant rejoinder I would get from Satyr over at KT. Only for him [of course] the "incoherent, the ignorant, and the stupid" people are all those who don't share his own hopelessly didactic "general descriptions" of human interactions: as either wholly in sync with his own rendition of nature or not. He'd have as much contempt for you as you apparently have for me.

Whereas I suspect this contempt resides more in the manner in which I view human motivation [re value judgments] here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

The psychology of objectivism indeed!

Faust wrote: If you can't distinguish English Common Law from a tarot card reading, you don't belong in the conversation. Distributive justice is not effective or ineffective. it's an analysis of what we actually do. Again, if you don't like analysis, philosophy just isn't for you.

Yeah, he would often go here as well. Huffing and puffing and making me the issue. Insisting that "analysis" -- a particular world of words -- is what philosophy is really all about.

Faust wrote: People insist they are human beings because the soul enters the body at conception.

Seriously?

Yes, many believe that. And while, like you, I don't take it seriously, that doesn't necessarily exclude it as one possible explanation taking us all the way back to a complete and unerring understanding of existence itself.

Indeed, how might Rawls have intertwined "distributive justice" into an "analysis" of that?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

My point above was that, ultimately, governments and laws and constitutions and such revolve precisely around whch "rules of behaviors" will be either prescribed or proscribed in any particular community.

Thus when you noted...

Faust wrote: Rawls would disallow metaphysical/religious arguments, as the courts generally do. He champions the importance of public institutions, such as the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights. Remember that Row v. Wade was fundamentally about the power of government.

I reacted this way...

That may well be how the lawyers see it, but for many, many others, Roe is all about the conflicting goods embedded in the act of killing the unborn.

And here in my view "distributive justice" is either more or less an intellectual contraption. From my frame of mind, the law is merely a reflection of human interactions at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power. And this I see as existential down to the bone.

Faust wrote: Take the Ten Commandments and all the other commandments that follow in the Bible (there are a lot of them). This was fundamentally law. Law. These were laws for the people of the tribe, for the "citizens". They....were....laws. They did of course have a moral content. But these commandments spell out what individuals can do and what the government can. So, you shall not kill, but the government can, by stoning an adultress, for instance. These were political arrangements. More important than Rachel and Hezekiah's particular views on abortion.

These commandments revolved first and foremost around "rules of behavior". And one's behaviors on this side of the grave only takes any particular mere mortals as far as Judgement Day. There their behaviors would be judged by God as...as what exactly?

I mean how did that work? If, in rendering unto Caesar, you broke one of God's Commandments...then what?

Those who are thought to be immoral for committing adultery and those who are shown to be lawful in stoning the adulterer to death....how does that work at the Pearly Gates?

From my frame of mind, laws eventually get around to the part where your behaviors are judged to be either the right thing to do or the wrong thing. As a part of what is good or a part of what is evil.

It's just that the laws are [hopefully] applicable to all -- true believer or not. At least on this side of the grave.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Now here I must protest. In what way is Nietzsche an objectivist? In what way does anybody use him that way? To indicate what the 'right thing to do' is?

With Nietzsche I was thinking more in the way in which many construe the meaning of the "uberman" exercising his "will to power".

In other words, in a world "beyond good and evil", "distributive justice" would reside more in the noble and sophisticated strong prescribing their own "rules of behavior" so as to be considerably apart from [and far, far above] that of the sheep.

Then your own behaviors [here and now] are deemed to be either more or less in sync with this frame of mind.

But, from my frame of mind, this is just one more "existential contraption" rooted historically in the assumption that we live in a No God world and that the rights of the individual take precedence over the rights of the community as a whole.

As though [philosophically or otherwise] this can actually be demonstrated.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Iam, you're spinning this. And making a category error. Christians don't believe that our value judgments should be "in sync" with God. That's vague language designed to give wiggle room. Christians belive that we should live according to received (dictated) values.

What are "existential variables"?

The doctor's language is not more precise than the ethicist. The difference is not in the precision, but in what they are describing. There is such a thing as descriptive ethics. It's different than normative ethics.

And as for the gobbledygook, you have not even attempted to address my points.

Asking what a point I have made "has to do with" a point that my point does not address is just more chaff.

I am not excluding religion - again you miss my point. I fear you are incapable of discerning it. You would be capable if you read Rawls. He wrote volumes. I can't summarize everything in a forum post. You argue with philosophy, which is fine, but you'd have a better argument if you knew something about philosophy. Reading Sartre's girlish whining is not enough.

Everyone, everyone who ever put pen to paper regarding morality knew and knows that we live in a world of conflicting goods. This is not a great revelation. Children know this before they know how to articulate it. It is not a great philosophical discovery - it's a basic, obvious, incontrovertible fact of life. It adds nothing to the conversation.

I'm not calling you incpherent, ignorant or stupid. I am saying that it is not the case that everyone's opinion counts. Or that those who do count, count equally. That Joey and Suzy can't figure it out means nothing. How would I resolve their kitchen table argument? I wouldn't. Who gives a fuck about Joey and Suzy?

It is not correct that all ideas are good, that all philosophy is sound or that all laws are just. What is difficult about this?

Yes, many believe that. And while, like you, I don't take it seriously, that doesn't necessarily exclude it as one possible explanation taking us all the way back to a complete and unerring understanding of existence itself.

An understanding of existence itself? This is soooooooooo absolutist, rationalist, objectivist.

There is no answer to this because it's a dumbass question. Now, don't take offense - lots of famous philosophers have asked this question. But if this is what you're looking for, there is no wonder that you cannot find the answer.

The question is incoherent. I tell you this not to insult you. But you must some day realize that you are using the objectivists questions to criticise objectivists. This is just a bad question.

I'll respond to your next post after I get high.

Jus' sayin'.

Last edited by Faust on Fri Apr 12, 2019 1:20 am, edited 3 times in total.

These commandments revolved first and foremost around "rules of behavior". And one's behaviors on this side of the grave only takes any particular mere mortals as far as Judgement Day. There their behaviors would be judged by God as...as what exactly?

No. The commandments don't "revolve around" rules of behavior. They are rules of behavior. You're changing the scope of my statement to support your second sentence, which does not follow from the first, either way. My claim had nothing to do with metaphsyics. You introduced that. You do this all the time - you do not respond to my posts, or anyone's post, because you address those posts from within a different paradigm. Any paradigm, as long as it's a different one, so that you're not expose to, or by, anything anyone else is saying.

My main aim here is to nudge -- spin -- the discussion in this direction:

How might Rawls's "method" be applicable with respect to the killing of the unborn? While I don't pretend to understand metaphysically how any particular abortion is related to a complete understanding of existence itself, it seems reasonable to me to suggest that with respect to the law, political power and moral narratives, "distributive justice" is either more or less effective in responding to my point that value judgments are rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

We? What "we" do here and now is to be the default in evaluating what others have done, do otherwise or ever will do? You simply exclude any and all religious or political or philosophical narratives that don't overlap with the U.S. Constitution? And what does this document tell us about the existential relationship between "distributive justice" and abortion? Or, say, the Second Amendment. How might Rawls's "methods" be applicable here?

Which is clearly not your aim.

Faust wrote: Christians don't believe that our value judgments should be "in sync" with God. That's vague language designed to give wiggle room. Christians belive that we should live according to received (dictated) values.

And how are these "received [dictated] values" not in sync with their own understanding of how they are expected to behave on this side of the grave in order to be judged by God as worthy of both immortality and salvation on the other side of it? It is all about coordinating their existing life -- the behaviors they choose -- with their own particular religious assumptions about sin.

Faust wrote: What are "existential variables"?

They are the particular factors in your life that predispose you to one rather than another set of value judgments. They range from the historical and cultural context in which you are born and raised to the actual personal experiences, relationships and access to ideas that shape and mold any particular "I" out in a particular world.

Faust wrote: The doctor's language is not more precise than the ethicist. The difference is not in the precision, but in what they are describing. There is such a thing as descriptive ethics. It's different than normative ethics.

The difference clearly revolves around the precision. The language that the doctor uses in performing the abortion is wholly in sync with human biology, human sexuality and an unwanted pregnancy. What of the language that Rawls might use in describing the abortion wars in terms of "distributive justice"?

Faust wrote: And as for the gobbledygook, you have not even attempted to address my points.

So you keep insisting. But from my frame of mind you are just one more didacticist aiming to steer the discussion up into the clouds of "analysis". To address your points is basically to go there with you. And, to the extent that you are adament that your points reflect philosophy at its finest, one must also agree with your points.

Faust wrote: I am not excluding religion - again you miss my point. I fear you are incapable of discerning it. You would be capable if you read Rawls. He wrote volumes. I can't summarize everything in a forum post. You argue with philosophy, which is fine, but you'd have a better argument if you knew something about philosophy. Reading Sartre's girlish whining is not enough.

I've adressed this before. Show me how Rawls's "method" would be instructive in regard to the components of my own narrative here. And bring that "method" down to earth by focusing in on how "for all practical purposes" "distributive justice" is relevant to an issue like abortion or gun control or gender norms or the role of government. I don't want a summary, I want the text to be illustrated.

Faust wrote: Everyone, everyone who ever put pen to paper regarding morality knew and knows that we live in a world of conflicting goods. This is not a great revelation. Children know this before they know how to articulate it. It is not a great philosophical discovery - it's a basic, obvious, incontrovertible fact of life. It adds nothing to the conversation.

Okay, so how does Rawls's methods [and his conclusions] effectively work to resolve them? And my chief aim in discussions like this has always revolved around objectivism. And the hole that I am in given the manner in which I construe "I" at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political economy.

Faust wrote: I'm not calling you incpherent, ignorant or stupid. I am saying that it is not the case that everyone's opinion counts. Or that those who do count, count equally. That Joey and Suzy can't figure it out means nothing. How would I resolve their kitchen table argument? I wouldn't. Who gives a fuck about Joey and Suzy?

Aside from the thousands upon thousands of them out in the world that we actually live in? And who are we with respect to conflicting goods but two more of them. Your intellectual contraptions and "general descriptions" may be of no use to them, but this tells us more about you than them in my view.

Faust wrote: It is not correct that all ideas are good, that all philosophy is sound or that all laws are just. What is difficult about this?

As yet another general description of "serious philosophy"? No doubt nothing at all in the hallowed halls. But what on earth [aside from logic and rationality relating strictly to the rules of language] does that really have to do with a "sound argument" made to those outside the abortion clinic exchanging their own rendtions of "the good"?

Yes, many believe that. And while, like you, I don't take it seriously, that doesn't necessarily exclude it as one possible explanation taking us all the way back to a complete and unerring understanding of existence itself.

Faust wrote: An understanding of existence itself? This is soooooooooo absolutist, rationalist, objectivist.

Are you actually going to argue that any discussion/debate we have here is not profoundly embedded in a whole and complete understanding of existence itself?!

That Rumsfelds observation...

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

...is irrelevant to which of us comes closest here to pinning "the human condition" down?!!

Faust wrote: There is no answer to this because it's a dumbass question. Now, don't take offense - lots of famous philosophers have asked this question. But if this is what you're looking for, there is no wonder that you cannot find the answer.

I'm more than willing to leave that up to others. Let them make up their own mind regarding the best way to connect the dots between "I" and "all there is". Or to simply dismiss it as...trivial?

Faust wrote: I'll respond to your next post after I get high.

Sure, maybe that will help.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Faust wrote:There's the general and there's the specific. Sophisticated analysis of any idea requires facility with both. If you can't manage that, you can't really even think.

I agree, I’ve noticed a lack in ability to notice this distinction and shift one’s frame accordingly. Every thought or idea or problem has its proper contexts, so attempts to address it without those proper contexts will always skew something.

These commandments revolved first and foremost around "rules of behavior". And one's behaviors on this side of the grave only takes any particular mere mortals as far as Judgement Day. There their behaviors would be judged by God as...as what exactly?

No. The commandments don't "revolve around" rules of behavior. They are rules of behavior. You're changing the scope of my statement to support your second sentence, which does not follow from the first, either way.

For all practical purposes, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

And what supports my second statement is the fact that literally millions upon millions of people around the globe believe that God's Commandments are a fundamental part of their own lives. Why? Because it is believed by them that their behaviors on this side of the grave will be judged by God. You may not believe this, I may not believe it, John Rawls may not have believed it, but "distributive justice" either takes this frame of mind into account or it doesn't.

Faust wrote: My claim had nothing to do with metaphsyics. You introduced that. You do this all the time - you do not respond to my posts, or anyone's post, because you address those posts from within a different paradigm. Any paradigm, as long as it's a different one, so that you're not expose to, or by, anything anyone else is saying.

What on earth does noting this...

My main aim here is to nudge -- spin -- the discussion in this direction:

How might Rawls's "method" be applicable with respect to the killing of the unborn? While I don't pretend to understand metaphysically how any particular abortion is related to a complete understanding of existence itself, it seems reasonable to me to suggest that with respect to the law, political power and moral narratives, "distributive justice" is either more or less effective in responding to my point that value judgments are rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

We? What "we" do here and now is to be the default in evaluating what others have done, do otherwise or ever will do? You simply exclude any and all religious or political or philosophical narratives that don't overlap with the U.S. Constitution? And what does this document tell us about the existential relationship between "distributive justice" and abortion? Or, say, the Second Amendment. How might Rawls's "methods" be applicable here?

...have to do with metaphysics?!

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Faust wrote:There's the general and there's the specific. Sophisticated analysis of any idea requires facility with both. If you can't manage that, you can't really even think.

I agree, I’ve noticed a lack in ability to notice this distinction and shift one’s frame accordingly. Every thought or idea or problem has its proper contexts, so attempts to address it without those proper contexts will always skew something.

Again, what on earth does this mean?

One's "frame of mind" in regard to what set of conflicting goods?

Or, as I suggested to Pedro above:

Choose a set of conflicting goods. Note your own moral narrative at the existential intersection of identity, value judgments and political power.

I'll respond to that.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles